


Curtain Call

by moodiful819



Series: Tabula Rasa [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Gallows Humor, Romance, Tragedy, feels warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 03:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9301289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodiful819/pseuds/moodiful819
Summary: And in the end, everything comes full circle. [Kakasaku]





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time coming, but I've finally finished this series! Thank you everyone who patiently waited for this day to come. I've had this in my head for the better part of a year now, but I wanted to make sure I got the mood just right for the end. I hope I've done it justice.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you liked it or if you are wrecked with feels. I'd be happy to know either. :)

The rain is barely a drizzle now, but the sound it makes on his flak vest seems deafening to his ears. He supposes this is what happens when someone dies. All the senses pull taut. Stretch to their extremes to cling to what little they can in what little time they have left. His spine feels colder, the mud feels wetter--it’s probably why he can smell the loam and blood so acutely that it stings--

Except he’s not the one dying.

Close to death, but _never quite there._ Kakashi looks at their medic who is lying a few feet from him. Surrounded by snapped weaponry and corpses, her pink hair stands out more than ever, but he’s more preoccupied by the crackles of purple erupting across her skin. The poison coursing through her veins was meant to incapacitate him to allow for his easy extraction; in her, it means that her chakra system is slowly being eaten away with no chance of healing herself of her egregious wounds. With their teammates too far away for rescue to come, it’s far too easy to see what will happen next.

He supposes he should tell her to hang on, for convention’s sake--but instead he simply asks, “Why did you do it?”

If she’s dying, he might as well get an answer from her. For posterity’s sake, or at least a really nice epigraph of her grave marker.

To his surprise, she still has the strength to laugh, a wide-mouthed grin with teeth, brilliance, and the taste of copper and rain. “What? And leave you to die? Not a chance.”

And he has the distinct feeling that they have had this conversation before, but he can’t, can’t-- _can’t_ remember it for the life of him. 

There’s a slight wheeze as she draws her next breath, growing louder with each inhale. It sounds like glass bones rattling in dark urns, marrow-curdling and fairy-light. Her hand gropes blindly in the air and he thinks she’s going to hum herself to death without a care until he realizes she’s going blind and reaching for things she cannot see. With a grunt, he pushes himself from the tree trunk he’d been blasted into and pulls his aching bones over towards her. When he places his hand in hers, her eyes are glassy and unfocused, but the worried line on her forehead finally disappears.

“Do you remember that time you tried to surprise the kids at the hospital as Santa and got stuck in the vents?” she asks suddenly.

No, he doesn’t remember. But he says he does anyway. What else could he say at a time like this? Her memory is fading and his is a spotty patchwork mess at best. A little white lie couldn’t hurt--it can’t hurt more than her fingernails crumbling into purple streaked gold with pus and ache.

She smiles to herself. Still manages to find joy despite what he imagines must be utter agony as her body slowly destroys itself. He is half-tempted to ask her what in the memory has managed to trap her in a euphoria better than the hospital drugs she had access to, but chooses instead to merely squeeze her hand to remind her that she is not alone, that he is still there even as she is drifting away.

She smiles at him and she beams brighter that the sun. “I love you.”

The statement is succinct, but he feels behind it every ounce of her being. It is devout, adoring, and _warm..._

It makes him want to retch. He wants nothing more than to run away, but her gaze, her hand, her expectant smile pin him there. Trap him under the blistering weight of her love until he smells his own skin smoking. It had been smothering in the months before, but now on the brink of her death, it is crushing.

He wonders if the past few months are flashing before her eyes. He knows it is for him, and it is hard to bite back the acidity of “I told you so.” Despite their promise to try to be friends, it was difficult to even manage that. They would do the things friends did: chat during their breaks, over coffee, sometimes dinner. Kakashi still lived separate from her, but he did come over from time to time for dinner or a movie. Their former marriage was never mentioned; the mementos were all carefully tucked away out of his sight… It was as if they had never been together.

Except the signs were still there, staring back at him from his soup bowl or tucked in his mission reports. Even with their past forgotten, the intimacy of their former lives was obvious and could not be easily thrown away by her. She made his favorite meals when he came over, just the way he liked it. When she dropped off a mission report on her way to work, it was organized not chronologically, but by what he was most likely to do first. She probably wasn’t even conscious of these things anymore, but Kakashi was acutely aware of it. How she, a near-stranger, knew him so intimately when he knew nothing at all. The imbalance was palpable, uncanny...

_Disturbing._

He often didn’t know what was worse: that he could feel the outline of the ghost of his former life inside of himself, or the tendril of hope he would see writhing in her eyes despite herself as they spent time together.

Because at the end of the day, it was a lost cause. If the past few months had taught him anything at all, it was that their love had truly been once in a lifetime—in every sense of the phrase. At most, he could only care for her as he would a dear friend, but that is not what she wants in her dying moments. She wants him. She wants her husband again. She wants a man who is no longer there.

After a silence, he tells her. “…I love you too.”

The lie tastes awful on his tongue. He doesn’t mean it. He bears her no romantic inclinations, and can never hope to match a fraction of what she obviously still feels for him.

But he also knows it’s the right thing to do for her as she lays here dying far from home. He owes her this much at least.  
  
He’s grateful for her failing vision. She cannot see the obvious self-loathing in his eyes or the tight line of his mouth as he grits through the falsehood. Instead, her smile grows more radiant and her breathing evens out from its harsh, sporadic wheezes to more pacific rhythms. With the grace of a dying star, she glows bright and thankfully, peacefully passes away.

He waits patiently for her last breaths to echo their way out of her lungs. It does not take long, but it is enough for a bird above them to chirp a few notes of a song and for his broken rib to throb deep in his side as a reminder. During this time, he surveys the damage, follows the network of fissures to her sternum where a chaotic flow of chain bubbles out of her neckline, a familiar half-circle glinting at him in the dim forest light. It mocks him, but he has no heart left to chide her for it.

Quietly placing her hand over her stomach, he neatens the chain until the ring lies between the valley of her breasts over her heart. With a practiced hand, he respectfully closes her eyes before folding them in his lap and patiently waits for help to come.


End file.
